Mega Thread Hot Topic - Drugs and AFL

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RussellEbertHandball said:
Part of me says throw it open but as I wrote in my previous post I worry about the 10 year old kids, s**t even the 18 year olds, who have dreams to be a world class athlete or a professional athlete yet know they only can meet their dreams if they pump themselves full of chemicals.

If you throw it open - you are going throw open the excessive use and abuse of PEDs and get deaths and severe health problems. Humans are too cofident they can handle things when they cant. You end up with the Goldman dilemma

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman's_dilemma

Goldman's dilemma, or the Goldman dilemma, is a question that was posed to elite athletes by physician, osteopath and publicistRobert Goldman, asking whether they would take a drug that would guarantee them overwhelming success in sport, but cause them to die after five years. In his research, as in previous research by Mirkin, approximately half the athletes responded that they would take the drug,[1] but modern research by James Connor and co-workers has yielded much lower numbers, with athletes having levels of acceptance of the dilemma that were similar to the general population of Australia

In the 1970s, Gabe Mirkin reported that more than half of the top runners whom he polled, would accept the following proposal: "If I could give you a pill that would make you an Olympic champion and also kill you in a year, would you take it?".[4] This surprising result prompted Bob Goldman to ask world-class athletes in combat and power sports a similar question: "If I had a magic drug that was so fantastic that if you took it once you would win every competition you would enter from the Olympic Decathlon to the Mr Universe, for the next five years but it had one minor drawback, it would kill you five years after you took it, would you still take the drug?" He also found that more than half said they would take it.[1] This result was consistent in his findings over a period from 1982 to 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman's_dilemma
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Yes, I see your point. Sadly I think its getting past the point where many youngens are using steroids.

I remember talking to my nephew about this a number of years back, he mentioned many guys he knew at 16 were taking them. Apparently they are fairly easy to get, according to him and some of his associates.


Goldmans dilemma is interesting. Reminds me a little of the movies with the Devil offering riches and fame for a brief time in exchange for your life, before collecting your soul. I wonder what we would see if a simular question was asked of the everyday public wether the response would be as high. If I offer you a pill that will guarantee riches and fame for 5 years but it will at the end of the 5 years, would you take it?

I guess all the education on the planet will not address the desire of fame and or fortune for some, REH. Perhaps it is about how these athletes are portrayed and marketed? Maybe when and if society ever gets to the point where its scientists and people who make a significant difference are lorded as highly as an athlete who is earning huge dollars that may change ?
 
Phhht said:
Its an interesting dilemma. One of my cousins was a very talented middleweight amateur boxer. He was at the level where he was looking at going to the Olympics. He'd pretty much accounted for all his opposition within Australia. Certainly not easily, boxing is never easy unless there is a fix. However I digress.

He got the the stage of competing in the final Australian Olympic trials. Made the final bout against an opponent he'd previously beaten on a few occasions. He was confident, maybe overconfident I dont know for sure, but he ended up losing that qualification bout.

Months later after he had retired from amateur boxing (at 20yo), I caught up with him and asked him about that last fight. He told me that within the first 30 seconds of that fight he knew he wouldnt win. He claims that he hit his opponent in that fight with the best 2 shots he'd ever thrown. Ever. It was like water off a ducks back. His opponent fought like a man possessed.

My cousin was convinced that the guy was in his words, 'juiced to the eyeballs'.

He was convinced that unless he followed the same path, he wouldnt achieve anything in amateur boxing. He retired. At 20.

The sad part is, a few years later he turned professional in a mixed martial art sport, achieved some decent success (Australian Middleweight Champ) but the shady part of that world saw him make poor life choices and he is now not in a good place.

But he didnt 'juice' up.
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That's a sad story Phhht. Sorry to hear that from the various facets you've presented.

I remember Phil McElwaine who won a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Australia and looked a great talent. The next (and last) I heard of him was as part of the Milperra bikie massacre (he beat the homicide rap).

Then there is the terrible story of Dean Waters and his dad. Waters has commented on drugs in boxing.

Heavyweight champ reveals boxing's nasty habits
''People will make assumptions and I want to rule out both my brothers and Jeff Fenech from the outset,'' Waters said. ''However, on three separate occasions I've seen with my own eyes guys take anabolic steroids and methamphetamines before fights.
''Meth gives a user super-human strength, incredible aggression and a belief you're invincible. It's a good mindset for a fighter.
''I saw a world title fight a few years back and the fighter was on meth … his trainer told me so … but what happened was he took too much and his hands couldn't keep up with his brain.''
Click to expand...
Heavyweight champ reveals boxing's nasty habits
 

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just finished watching Catalyst and a story about cyclic peptides. plants produce them naturally to help stop insects eating them. The story finished of by looking down the track how these plants will be modified so these pepitides are produced more intensely by the plant so that they become a source for these type of drugs - and people in poor countries can grow these plants to get access to vital drugs rather buy them from big Pharma. I can see the sports industry wanting to get access to these type of seeds and arguing they are only eating natural foods and didnt use any chemical injected banned PEDs.
 
Think it will always be about finding ways of masking the use and staying a step in front of the good guys. They seem to be wanting to be certain of dosage rather than casualy grazing injection is always going to be the best method of administration going though the gut is just leaving to much to chance.
 
Reading all this about no clean professional sports, always has me worried.
I love Port Adelaide but I think if it ever came out we did anything even close to doping I'd straight up stop supporting the team and never watch AFL again.

I have little knowledge of the inner workings of an AFL fitness department however

I don't even like the idea of the players being injected with anything at all or taking X amount of "vitamins" or being injected with painkillers during a match if they had been injured..

Suppose that is just my feelings on it though.

I'd be appalled if I was an Essendon supporter and found out players were being injected with anything to help boost performance.
If it wasn't boosting performance or recovery time Essendon wouldn't of been doing it.
 
SilenceOz said:
I love Port Adelaide but I think if it ever came out we did anything even close to doping I'd straight up stop supporting the team and never watch AFL again.
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No other club would be stupid enough to run a team drug program the way Essendon did and there would be very few cases of players being pressured by their coaches, but the stuff is there and easy to obtain if a player wants it.

The Essendon thing will never happen again in the AFL.
 
Ford Fairlane said:
That's a sad story Phhht. Sorry to hear that from the various facets you've presented.

I remember Phil McElwaine who won a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Australia and looked a great talent. The next (and last) I heard of him was as part of the Milperra bikie massacre (he beat the homicide rap).

Then there is the terrible story of Dean Waters and his dad. Waters has commented on drugs in boxing.

Heavyweight champ reveals boxing's nasty habits

Heavyweight champ reveals boxing's nasty habits
Click to expand...

Yeah my cousins story is a sad story and to be honest, probably a more horrifying one. He made some decisions and did things I am ashamed of. He hasnt beaten the rap and will be a very old man if he ever gets out. And to be honest, he doesnt deserve to see the light of day again.

He was an insanely talented athlete. Any sport a natural and had an insane work ethic, even as a young adolescent. Some of the things he could do just blew my mind. Some of his training was brutal and he ate it up.

He had good family support, wasnt struggling for cash, good coaching, was being trained by Keith Ellis for a while there. He was vehemently anti-drugs of any sort. Not even a Samantha Riley headache tablet, ever.
No real impediments and I honestly thought he could have made it. He is a year younger than me and I only ever knew him as a good kid. Bit cocky but a good kid. Then came that fight and it changed his whole outlook on life. I dont think he knew how to cope with it. Not the losing, he'd lost fights before. But he couldnt come to terms with his dream being taken away by a less talented person who basically cheated.

I often wonder if he'd decided to try the 'juice', remained an amateur for a little longer (tried for the next Olympics) he may have been a little more mature before turning pro and being exposed to the vampires and scumbags that eventually dragged him into the depths of the deepest gutters. Once they got their hooks into him it was a downward spiral he couldnt get himself out of.

Now he could only be described as a very very bad person.
 
It's terrible how tragically life can spiral out of control. We tend to look at the issue of drugs in AFL or sport in general through the tunnel vision of competitive advantage when in reality it is a prism that when light is shone on it fractures in so many different directions. Even affecting those who didn't take drugs.
 
raman said:
Remember when James Hird was an almost universally admired footy player? A Brownlow medalist with insane skills who could play literally anywhere on the ground, and was actually also tough as **** despite his pretty boy image?

LOL

Imagine having that, and pissing it down the drain like this.
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I was having a chat with someone about an AFL equivalent of a Tom Brady story eg. late draft pick, sporting hero, did it all & almost mentioned Hird pre coaching career but even then I don't think our sport has a close comparison.

His hero to zero fall from grace has been on a similar scale to that of Woods & Armstrong it's quite remarkable really.
 
Seanybruz said:
I was having a chat with someone about an AFL equivalent of a Tom Brady story eg. late draft pick, sporting hero, did it all & almost mentioned Hird pre coaching career but even then I don't think our sport has a close comparison.

His hero to zero fall from grace has been on a similar scale to that of Woods & Armstrong it's quite remarkable really.
Click to expand...

You either die a hero...or live long enough to become the villain


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I watched The Armstrong Lie the other day and the one thing that has stuck with me is that in the early days, to gain an advantage, cyclists would drink beer. I am definitely going to try this method to see if it makes me a better athlete
 
Jason K said:
I watched The Armstrong Lie the other day and the one thing that has stuck with me is that in the early days, to gain an advantage, cyclists would drink beer. I am definitely going to try this method to see if it makes me a better athlete
Click to expand...

Harold Larwood felt that a few ales made him a faster bowler.
 
I posted this on the Paddy Ryder thread but it is probably just as relevant here. It relates to the Rucci back page story in today's Monoploy Times.

Rucci's article is confusing because he makes a point that officially the clubs do not know the identity of the players charged by ASADA. If that is so how do the clubs know who is 'provisionally suspended' by the AFL Tribunal? As the situation stands, if Ryder and Monfries and twenty other players do not play in the NAB Cup the whole world is going to know why. About the only way the AFL will preserve anonymity is to allow all players to participate in NAB games without penalty.

That whole article reads a bit like a 'look at me I am back' article on Rucci's part. Tomorrow's Monopoly Times will probably carry a headline about the delay in the Stadium Deal just to complete the set.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport...-doping-tribunal/story-fnia6ojc-1227209447716

Interesting that the on line article in the above link is not exactly the same as that printed in my copy of today's Monopoly Times. The last four paragraphs have been cut from the hard edition. Maybe simply a space thing.
 
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